Ideas to inspire state improvement
Many of the following recommendations would save a significant amount of money, improve quality of life, and enhance our Natural State’s image. Most would require legislation; if a governor pushed them, they would have a good chance of becoming law.
Although the odds of most of them being enacted are exceedingly long, several of these suggestions are already on the books in other states and western European countries. If we are ever going to make gains in Arkansas, sooner or later we will adopt most of these suggestions.
1. Pass a bill in the Legislature to make all state and local elections non-political. There would not be party affiliations on ballots. There would be a top two runoff if none of the candidates receive greater than 50 percent of the vote. The person with the most votes would be the winner.
Running without any party affiliation is already being done in some Arkansas cities, and serves to ensure the person who receives the most votes wins the election. This would go a long way in cooling partisan bickering in making decisions, resulting in a true citizens’ election, which would separate the state from any political party’s national agenda.
2. Make gender equality a mandate for all state and local boards and commissions. This is already the law in a number of European countries, and various states have taken steps toward that goal.
How can you oppose giving half our citizens an equal say? We have plenty of qualified women. Surveys have shown boards and commissions are more productive if they are gender balanced. California has passed a law that mandates corporate boards registered in the state have equal representation. Equal gender representation is as important as the right to vote, and without a doubt it will happen here in Arkansas in the years ahead. Why wait?
3. Set a goal to make complete ecological restoration a primary consideration of the Game and Fish Commission, including the restoration of apex predators. In order to have the best wildlife management programs, we must have a diverse population.
Without apex predators it is impossible to eradicate CWD and have plentiful quail and turkeys.
4. Create a Frivolous Bill Commission empowered to reject worthless legislative bills, such as making the red wasp the official state wasp. With as many as 1,500 bills filed each session, hundreds should never even make it to a committee. The saving of time and money would be substantial.
5. Make daylight saving time yearround. Surely you don’t like it being totally dark at 5:30 p.m. in the winter. There is a bill in Congress which would do this, and Arkansas should support it. A time change was meant to increase productivity in World War II, and that need passed decades ago.
6. Pass a comprehensive environmental bill, which would phase out over five years plastic straws, one-use plastic bags, and non-returnable soft drink and beer bottles, and over 10 years replace coal with natural gas as the fuel for electrical generating plants.
7. Enact a one-cent sales tax to be used strictly for improvements in education. If we can give $500 million tax cuts to the top bracket earners and run a $500 million surplus in tax revenues, surely we can pay our teachers a proper wage and make a two-year community college education available to Arkansas high school graduates.
8. Enact legislation to prevent the Arkansas attorney general from joining federal lawsuits by other states. Joining other states’ lawsuits is just political posturing, and outside of gaining political exposure it is worthless. Let’s put an end to that waste of time and money.
9. Make the author or sponsor of any bill ruled by the federal courts as unconstitutional pay for the legal fees incurred when the bill is challenged. Most of these bills are also political posturing. A lot of these bills are obviously unconstitutional; surely their sponsors know it.
10. Double the size of our state parks. I’ve visited most of them and have never been to one that wouldn’t be better or more accessible if it were doubled. There are numerous areas of significant natural or historic importance which should be added.
11. Raise the penalty for roadside littering to $2,500 per offense, increase the warning signs, and demand the Arkansas Department of Transportation add enforcement personnel to be sure offending individuals are charged.
12. Put a $10/tail bounty on feral hogs. If we don’t control them, the decline in our wild turkey population will continue until it reaches the quail level.
14. Create an incentive-driven program to combat roadside litter that would pay an individual $10 for every large bag of litter turned in. The state already spends thousands to fight the problem, and this would help. Make it similar to the Adopt-a-Street Program in effect in several cities.
14. Increase the environmental focus of ArDOT with a non-political committee which would recommend additional trees, shrubs, and sidewalk development along Arkansas highways. Expand the current sidewalk program on Arkansas 167 south and Arkansas 82 east to a statewide program where highways are in the city limits. Plant shrubs or crape myrtles in the green strip between the sidewalk and the highway.
15. Have a state-sponsored grant program to plant 100,000 downtown trees in towns and cities. Chicago has recently completed a 1 million city street tree-planting program. We’re the Natural State, so let’s act like it.